Pensioners with younger partners won't be able to claim pension credit under new rules - MSE News

jem16

Pollycat wrote: »

Yes, I remembered you were one of the 'born in 1960's' women totally disregarded by WASPI.


Anyway, enough of the 'silly minnies'.

Silvertabby must be a 50s' born woman if she's expecting her state pension in 3 years' time.

She's just like both of us 50s' born women who don't agree with either Waspi or Back to 60.

Silvertabby

jem16 wrote: »

Silvertabby must be a 50s' born woman if she's expecting her state pension in 3 years' time.

She's just like both of us 50s' born women who don't agree with either Waspi or Back to 60.

Yes on both counts - 1956.

JezR

Silvertabby wrote: »

Back in the 1940s, the problem of men not being able to claim the married rate State pension until their (usually younger) wives also reached State pension age was addressed by - lowering women's State pension age from 65 to 60. And now look at all the problems that caused !

The main group this was designed to help were men that had until reaching 65 been claiming Unemployment Benefit. This was paid out at a rate of 27/- per week. On reaching 65 this reduced to a pension of 20/- if married to a woman of pensionable age, but as low as 10/- if married to a woman less than pensionable age (the same as a single man).

Ten shillings a week wasn't much for a single person let alone a couple to live on. Indeed most insured people who were still capable of work and could find it would carry on doing so. It is notable that the working age insured benefits, such as they were in 1940, were higher than the state pension.

poppy10_2

SnowMan wrote: »

This is a huge cut in benefits for mixed age couples (i.e. one above and one below State Pension Age) who aren't already getting pension credit. This is because working age benefits are much less generous than pensioner benefits.

Time to cut pensioner benefits. These boomers have been receiving gold-plated triple-locked pensions which the working age population have to pay for. Absolutely no reason why the state pension rises should be higher than the average working wage rise.

margaretclare

Silvertabby wrote: »

Back in the 1940s, the problem of men not being able to claim the married rate State pension until their (usually younger) wives also reached State pension age was addressed by - lowering women's State pension age from 65 to 60. And now look at all the problems that caused !

The thinking was very different in the 1940s. It was assumed that, following war's end, women would go quietly back home, leave their jobs, 'replenish the race' as Beveridge put it, and would not need a pension of their own.



Thinking has changed hugely in the intervening years. There is not supposed to be a 'married state pension' paid to the man and meant to cover the needs of both.

JezR

The Beveridge report includes a lot of quaint ideas. It doesn't actually envisage a married man's pension as such, but the reverse in that the standard rate would be paid to a married man, and a reduced rate in the absence of a wife.

The last census made before the Second World War back in 1931 showed only about 1 in 8 married women working in an insured job (note though that NI then was not universal; no one in the 'professions' or domestic servants paid it for example). This had increased a bit by 1939, but estimates only put it at around 1 in 7. Beveridge did expect it to revert back to that in time.

The pre-Beveridge benefit system considered married working women to be an 'anomaly' and they were for example denied Unemployment Benefit, even if otherwise they would have been entitled through their record. This was on the basis that they hadn't really to find work if their husband was working. This ignored such working women in textiles and potteries, who didn't usually cease work on marriage.

Silvertabby

JezR wrote: »

The Beveridge report includes a lot of quaint ideas. It doesn't actually envisage a married man's pension as such, but the reverse in that the standard rate would be paid to a married man, and a reduced rate in the absence of a wife.

The last census made before the Second World War back in 1931 showed only about 1 in 8 married women working in an insured job (note though that NI then was not universal; no one in the 'professions' or domestic servants paid it for example). This had increased a bit by 1939, but estimates only put it at around 1 in 7. Beveridge did expect it to revert back to that in time.

The pre-Beveridge benefit system considered married working women to be an 'anomaly' and they were for example denied Unemployment Benefit, even if otherwise they would have been entitled through their record. This was on the basis that they hadn't really to find work if their husband was working. This ignored such working women in textiles and potteries, who didn't usually cease work on marriage.

Thinking behind the new NHS, when it was introduced, was possibly even quainter. Bevan assumed that the relative cost of funding the service would actually decrease, once the population was restored to good health!

Malthusian

Silvertabby wrote: »

Thinking behind the new NHS, when it was introduced, was possibly even quainter. Bevan assumed that the relative cost of funding the service would actually decrease, once the population was restored to good health!

You do see this fallacy stated a lot - i.e. whenever someone goes off on one about "smokers costing the NHS x hundred million" or "obese people costing the NHS x hundred million", when in fact they perform a heroic financial sacrifice to the nation, by not living even longer and costing the NHS - and the benefit system - far more.

But you'd think the architect of the NHS might have thought it through.

margaretclare

The last census made before the Second World War back in 1931 showed only about 1 in 8 married women working in an insured job (note though that NI then was not universal; no one in the 'professions' or domestic servants paid it for example). This had increased a bit by 1939, but estimates only put it at around 1 in 7. Beveridge did expect it to revert back to that in time.

There was a 'marriage bar' in many jobs such as teaching - this was pointed out in a recent TV series 'Back in time for school'.


I didn't know that domestic servants didn't pay NI. That explains why my mother, a domestic worker, had to do it for herself. She bought her own NI stamps and stuck them on her card every week. I have the clearest memories of her carefully writing the date across each stamp once she'd stuck them on. I also knew a woman back in the 40s/50s who wasn't even working, but she was determined to have her own pension to draw in her own right.


Having known people like that, who thought that having your own pension rights was a worthwhile thing to do, must have influenced me to 'pay the full stamp' for years when many said I needn't. Many laughed at me, but they weren't laughing later.

JezR

Pre-Beveridge NI was designed for the working class - originally really men, but particularly after the First World War there was a significant number of widows and spinsters paying their own way through. Some sectors were excluded; the railways was one I think. There was also a maximum earnings level over which eligibility ceased, somewhere around £200-250 per annum. Insured Pensions weren't a working life accumulated right, it was only the last 5 years before pension age that was important, although I don't know the precise rules. People who didn't qualify had to wait until they were 70 and met the means test rules.

A whole different world.